


Choose Your Own Adventure

by 221b_hound



Series: The Million Word Festival [2]
Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: Angst with a Happy Ending, Multi, Polyamory, Polyamory Negotiations, Prompt Fic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-12-09
Updated: 2015-12-09
Packaged: 2018-05-05 19:23:28
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,641
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5387432
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/221b_hound/pseuds/221b_hound
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>John loves Mary. John loves Sherlock. He's made a mess of it. Mary loves John. Mary loves Sherlock. Maybe John won't have to choose. That depends on who Sherlock loves.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Choose Your Own Adventure

**Author's Note:**

  * For [MissDavis](https://archiveofourown.org/users/MissDavis/gifts).



> The first prompt fill for The Million Word Festival. Thank you MissDavis, who prompted "Umm...(whispers) Johnlockary? Any type, any rating, anything at all. I'm starving."

Mary Watson, formerly Mary Morstan, formerly… someone else… had never wanted for courage. She’d never needed it as she needed it now, though. Now that Sherlock was staring at her like she’d grown a second head.

‘This isn’t funny,’ he said. He looked like he was about to snarl. Or cry. Or set fire to something. Or someone.

‘I’m not being funny,’ she said, ‘I’m trying to…’

_To what? Save her marriage? Save John? Save Sherlock? Be happy? All of the above?_

‘I won’t make him choose between us,’ Mary continued, ‘He thinks he has to, and he doesn’t. At least… I don’t think he has to. Not if…’

So many sentences she didn’t know how to finish. They’d been hard enough to _start._ Sentences like, ‘John has left me and gone to a hotel because he…’ and ‘We were in bed and he called out your name instead of mine…’ and ‘I told him I understand, but he doesn’t know how I could…’

And now Sherlock stared at her like she’d just torn his world to ribbons. The way John’s had just been torn to ribbons.

Honestly, was she the only one of the three of them who’d known all along?

‘Sherlock,’ said Mary, taking every scrap of courage and strength she’d ever had and making herself complete a whole sentence, _for fuck’s sake_ , ‘He’s in love with you. He’s been in love with you for years. I know it, even if you and John don’t. Or didn’t. I keep telling him it’s all right, and he keeps hanging up on me because he’s ashamed and he’s scared, because he thinks you don’t love him back, and it’s a mess. He keeps telling me he love me too, and it’s true. I believe him.’

‘Yes,’ said Sherlock grimly, ‘He loves you.’

‘He loves _both of us_ ,’ Mary snapped, ‘And it’s tearing him apart thinking he has to choose. Okay, so maybe he fell in love with me because you went off and pretended to be dead, and if you hadn’t done that, and I hadn’t come along, it would all look different now. But here it is. John loves you, and John loves me. And I love John. And I love you.’

There. It was said. The truth she had never shared.

She’d known John was in love with Sherlock, and remained in love with Sherlock, from the start. When Sherlock had returned she’d expected to be jealous, or angry, or even _noble_ , but in the end she’d just… fallen in love herself. In love with the man who the man she loved, loved.

Now if she could just get Sherlock to admit where _he_ stood, they might get somewhere.

Sherlock currently looked like he’d received 600 volts of electricity up his arse.

‘You… love _John_.’ His attempt to correct her was full of wariness.

‘I love John. I love you. It happens. If you tell me it doesn’t, I’m going to ask you where you think the word “polyamory” comes from.’

Sherlock was frozen. At least he’d stopped looking like he wanted to set her on fire with his laser eyes.

‘So. Sherlock.’ Mary took a deep breath. ‘Given that John and I love each other, and that we both love you, the question is… do we have to make John choose?’

‘You are proposing we… share… John?’ Sherlock didn’t look too happy with that idea. He also looked confused. It should have been a rare moment to treasure but Mary hated that the whole thing was making Sherlock as stupid as the rest of them.

‘No. I’m proposing that we…. Look. Sherlock. I know you love him. I know that. I want you to know that I know that, even if it’s somehow passed John by.’

‘I don’t…’

‘Liar.’

‘I’m not…’

‘Liar.’

Sherlock sighed. ‘Yes. I love John. But he doesn’t…’

‘Are you listening to me? He does. Three nights ago we were going at it, he was behind me, and he said your name as he came, and then he locked himself in the bathroom and wouldn’t come out till I left the house. I keep telling him it’s all right, and he keeps saying that he’s sorry and that he loves me and that he loves you and that he’s fucked everything up, and that’s only true if we let it be true. Are we going to let it be true? Are we? Because I don’t want him to have to choose. I want him to be with both the people he loves. I want to be with both the people I love. And… I don’t mean to put the weight of the world on your shoulders, Sherlock, but the next bit depends on how you feel. About me. If you can… if you can love me. If you can love me like you love him.’

And Mary ran out of words. She ran out of courage. She ran out of strength. She could only stand and stare at Sherlock and wait to find out how her world was going to change.

Because it was going to change, one way or another. And if Sherlock said no, then she’d… she’d…

She didn’t want to finish that sentence. She didn’t know how.

‘I don’t love you the way I love him,’ said Sherlock, his expression the kindest she’d ever seen, and it slayed her, that kindness, it killed her and everything she’d hoped for. She was dying where she stood and it hurt more than any of the other ways she’d died, or nearly, in the past.

‘I love you the way I love _you_.’

She was still dying when he cupped her face in his hand. She began to breathe when he caressed her cheek with his fingertips.

She began to live again when he bent his head to brush her lips with his own.

‘None of us have to choose.’ It was meant to be a statement, but Sherlock’s voice lilted up at the end.

‘None of us have to choose,’ Mary agreed, nodding, eyes washed with tears that had begun in grief and ended in hope. ‘We just have to convince John.’

Her tears gathered and fell, and Sherlock brushed them away with the edge of his thumb.

‘He’ll see,’ he said, ‘We’ll help him to see.’

*

John resisted at first. He didn’t think it could be right. But he’d always made only a nominal fuss about appearances, and then leapt into the fray – chasing killers, killing cabbies, giggling at crime scenes.

So the resistance was token, overcome by the relief. _He didn’t have to choose_. He didn't have to do what was impossible to do.

He’d always been more Bohemian under the skin than he looked on the surface. And now he embraced that less rigid world view, because it gave him, at long, long last, everything he had ever wanted. It gave him everyone he loved.

*

John lay awake in the middle of the king sized hotel bed, pinned down by the people he would die for, and kill for, and survive for. By the people who had done those things for him, in different ways, at different times, and now all three for each other, just four days ago.

It had been a very convenient accident, how that prick Magnussen had fallen from the cliff into the sea. Tragic accident. Just awful.

Ha.

Magnussen's secretary Janine’s scheme had dovetailed very nicely with their own, even if she didn’t know about them. They’d done her the favour of covering her tracks, though. Janine might never know how much they’d helped her, but that didn’t matter. Magnussen was dead, the few documents he had destroyed, that poisonous mind palace of his just so much decaying grey matter now, and that was the only thing of importance.

Mary had at the crucial moment come to them for help, and they’d accepted the commission. They’d accepted her. John and Sherlock had between them smashed the memory stick to pieces and thrown it in the fire without looking at it. She was still their Mary – whoever else she had once been, she’d made that choice. She had chosen them and their future. And they chose her back.

Mary was snugged up along John’s right side, her nose pressed against his shoulder, one bare leg draped over his thigh, her hand resting on his belly, underneath Sherlock’s hand. Her breathing was even and deep, though occasionally she made a sweet little humming sound in her sleep, like she did when she was contented.

Along John’s left side, Sherlock was snugged more closely still. His sleep was more troubled and sometimes he made an almost mewing sound of distress. In the space of six months, John had already learned that Sherlock didn’t know he did this, and that the best remedy for it was to brush his lips against Sherlock’s ear and breathe, ‘Sssshh, we’ve got you. You’re home. We’ve got you.’

John did that now. He kissed Sherlock’s temple and breathed reassurance and Sherlock settled, pressed his body close alongside John’s, his arm across John’s waist so that his hand rested over Mary’s on John’s stomach. 

John, an arm around each of them, knew he’d have to move soon. But not yet. Not yet. Not yet.

For now he held them close, the two halves of his heart, and breathed in their individual and combined scents. Claire de la Lune and chemicals and gun oil and the sweat of their bodies and the sex they’d just had, the three of them, wild and passionate and exquisite with triumph and relief.

They were free now, all three of them.

John stretched, pulled Sherlock closer with one arm, bumped his nose against sleeping Mary’s brow, and smiled at Mary’s little belly, just starting to show.

The _four_ of them.


End file.
